


Unmasked

by pyxistar



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Betrayal, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Partner Betrayal, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28419423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyxistar/pseuds/pyxistar
Summary: She feels herself roll onto her side; it’s just enough, it seems, just in time. The air beside her becomes unsettled as a steel object slams into the spot she occupied only moments before. A splintering hole forms. The entire building seems to quiver.For the umpteenth time that night, Ladybug wonders if she’s going to survive.
Relationships: Alya Césaire & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alyanette
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Unmasked

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been an insanely long time since I’ve posted a fanfiction, hasn’t it? I’ve been suffering a shortage of time and a lack of motivation. I decided that instead of not writing at all, rewriting a few of my old, cringe-worthy stories might be a good way to get myself back into the swing of things! The story I’m rewriting today is Unmasked which I wrote for my girlfriend. This is also a two-shot, so if you like it, keep an eye out for the second part!
> 
> After four months of laborious writing, editing, and revising this first part is finally complete. It ended up being a total of 3,589 words.
> 
> Please be aware that this does contain LGBTQ+ characters. The story features a lesbian ship (Alya and Marinette). It will also contain brief mentions and descriptions of the following: blood, injury, betrayal, and swearing. Don’t worry, there will be some fluff here as well. 😌💞
> 
> Without further ado, enjoy!

The pale moonlight adds a gruesome glow to her purpling skin as metallic flavors flood her mouth. Damp blackberry hair clings to her forehead. Red streaks, diluted by the battering rainwater, runs down her neck. Ladybug feels as though a jackhammer has been positioned at the base of her skull, leaving in its wake a miserably dull yet throbbing pain. 

She half-heartedly lands on the rooftop of a random apartment complex. Ladybug squints; the horizon is smudged by a rising, silver mist and charcoal thunderclouds. Nearby street signs tell her she’s at least halfway to her destination. Or she thinks that she is, anyway. Her thoughts are lofty, rising like the flighty steam trails of the earth: they are but a faraway dream her fingers cannot catch. 

Slowly, she stands. Just the act of straightening her back and setting her shoulders straight make her start to sway. Her vision fizzles out around the edges, like watching static appear on old TVs. Sirens go off in her ears. Ladybug finds herself holding her breath just to keep herself from teetering over the edge and kissing the concrete after a six story drop.

Back straight. Shoulders level. Head up. Ladybug’s eyes settle on a building across the street. Stay focused. Don’t look back. Keep pushing on. A stitch in her side offers protest; it takes all of her strength not to give into its demands and slump down into a useless pile of jelly on the ground. Everything, down to the roots of her hair, feels out of place. 

Finally, Ladybug narrows her eyes. She starts running, pumping her arms and legs in an attempt to increase momentum. When it’s time to jump, Ladybug can tell she isn’t moving fast enough to glide over the street that yawns between rooftops. She doesn’t have time to second guess herself. She has to commit. Ladybug kicks off of the edge of the rooftop and aims for the next building.

She lands haphazardly on the shingles; the roof is slick, and her left ankle rolls the moment her feet hit the ground. Ladybug doesn’t even have time to scream. Arms flailing, teeth chattering, head exploding with a fresh dose of dizziness, Ladybug realizes that she’s falling. She lands on her chin first; her bottom teeth grind against her upper jaw, and it feels as though something chips off. Suspiciously, around that same time, she feels a foreign object settle on her tongue.

Falling feels like sandpaper grating against her skin. Fresh cuts and bruises echo the old sharp, stinging pains that are still open and oozing scarlet. Her fingertips are rubbed raw as she scrambles to grab onto something that will cut her descent short. Something that will hold beneath her weight and give her the leverage she needs to hoist herself back up. She feels nothing but patchy shingles. 

Ladybug’s legs meet the open air. Her lower half dangles over the edge, her upper half still scrambling to prevent a nosedive into the sidewalk. She closes her eyes, swallows hard though her throat is raw from screaming. 

If she begins to fall, maybe she can grab her yo-yo?  _ No _ , she corrects herself, her yo-yo is gone. Stolen. Will it regenerate when she de-transforms? She doesn’t know, but she’s afraid to try it. The suit is all that holds her together.

She braces herself to hit the pavement below. Ladybug feels like a ragdoll. The storm is a child, picking her up and manhandling her body before growing bored and letting her drop. Suddenly, Ladybug is hyper-aware of how delicate she is. When she hits the sidewalk, she knows her bones will fracture and splinter apart like cheap plastic. She imagines the numbness that will overtake her before even that fizzles out and fades into nothingness.

The rest of her body disappears over the edge. Her fingers desperately grab at the rooftop, a last ditch effort to spare herself from the fall. Then she feels it. The divet in the roof, the shift from a sandpaper texture to that of smooth vinyl. Her fingers hook around the building’s rain gutter. Her body jerks and the gutter grunts but it holds. She hangs there in midair, panting like a dog in a sweltering summer heat. 

She pulls herself back up and flops onto her back to catch her breath. She feels like a beached whale; her body is just as heavy. Ladybug’s lungs burn as if deprived of air, and her skin (especially her palms) feels coarse and dry. Her biceps are ablaze. Every movement, even blinking, feels taxing. Ladybug’s heart beats louder than the thunder outside as if she is comparing the thud of a basketball to the explosion of a nuclear bomb.

Her eyes catch the menacing glint of light. It’s a cold, almost lonely silver, echoing the flashes of lightning on the length of its metallic surface. She barely notices it from the peripheral of her vision. Yet it becomes clear to Ladybug: something approaches from the left, footsteps nothing more than a hushed whisper beneath the shield of roaring rainfall. 

She feels herself roll onto her side; it’s just enough, it seems, just in time. The air beside her becomes unsettled as a steel object slams into the spot she occupied only moments before. A splintering hole forms. The entire building seems to quiver.

For the umpteenth time that night, Ladybug wonders if she’s going to survive.

︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶﹀

Barren tree branches scratch the dark corners of the nighttime sky. They’re bony in appearance, becoming desperate witch fingers in the peripheral of Alya’s vision. Their scorn for her carries on the bitter, northern winds. They hurl insults in the breathy screeches that slip in through the cracks of her window frame. The only disruptions come from the low bellows of thunder, which rattles her clenched jaw. Still, the redhead attempts to focus on her work; her fingers dance across her keyboard, the clacking of keys adding to the disturbing ambiance of the night. 

She reaches underneath her glasses with her fingers and rubs the bags forming beneath her eyes. They feel heavy enough to sink back into the far reaches of her skull. The white light of her laptop doesn’t help. Nor does the singeing heat of it against the bare skin of her thighs, although it does keep her awake. 

Alya hasn’t updated the Ladyblog in almost two weeks. The snapshots of the dynamic duo, Ladybug and Chat Noir, that she’s managed to grab within the last fourteen days sit neglected in her camera roll. The more outdated they grow, the less motivated she becomes. 

Writing about the city’s heroes used to be a breeze. She’d easily write three thousand words in a day as if her fingers were runners in a 5k marathon. Now? Her blog may as well be another school assignment. It’s laborious. Hard to concentrate on. Headache inducing. She sighs. When did this become so hard?

Alya glances over what she’s already written. Most of it is nonsense. It sounds uninspired. Every sentence is clipped, almost scathing. Three hundred words in and she already knows that this will become yet another unfinished doc, never to be published or read by a second pair of eyes. Or a third, or a fourth, for that matter. Alya seethes in frustration and snaps the laptop shut. 

Then, as suddenly and loudly as a stray bullet, something hits her window. 

_ It’s probably just a tree branch, _ Alya tells her buzzing nerves. That answer soothes her until she hears it again — a loud, deliberate bang. 

She quickly glances at the shadows cast on her bedroom floor by lightning and the golden hue of streetlights. There, a silhouette shifts across the floor. Their figure is slender, with supple curves that hint at their femininity. Alya shoves her laptop to the end of her bed and eases herself up into a standing position.

Her mind screams akuma. Normally, she would grab her phone to get a picture, but this time she feels the heavy weight of fear splintering the bones in her chest. 

The akuma sits on her windowsill, clawing desperately at the glass, most likely wishing Alya and her family harm. Alya is completely defenseless, practically naked without her miraculous. The figure pounds on her window again. When that doesn’t garner a response, Alya hears them scratch at the frame. It’s almost as if they wanted to pry apart the wood splinter-by-splinter. She ducks down at the side of her bed, praying that they couldn’t see her shadow moving through the curtains.

Alya instinctively crawls to her nightstand and unplugs her lamp from the wall. The light blinks out. She holds it firmly in the palms of her hands, brandishing it like a baseball bat. 

The lamp feels odd in her hold: it is unbalanced, especially with the lampshade weighing down the front. It’s better than nothing, though, she acknowledges as she creeps toward the window. Alya holds her breath and walks only on her toes in a low, crouched position, practically hugging the lamp to her chest with one arm while the other keeps her steady, pressing her palm into the floor with each step.

When Alya makes it to the window, she pauses. She waits with bated breath, mulling over her options. Would it be better for her to shoot first and ask questions later? Maybe she should wake her parents instead, or call the police? The banging is becoming more persistent, and the sound grows louder with each strike of the akuma’s fist. The situation feels dire — either do or die. 

Alya decides to assess the situation first. She peers up over the windowsill. On the other side of the glass, desperately gripping at the frame, crouches a young girl scarcely younger than Alya. What little skin the young woman shows is paler than the face of the moon, freckled by a million purpling bruises. Watered down blood smears her cheekbones like clownish blush and seeps into the crack between her lips. Then there’s the matter of her eyes — jaded, blue eyes that mirror the electric blue of the lightning outside — which have bags deeper and darker than the void of space.

“Holy shit,” Alya breathes. The lamp clatters to the ground. Quickly, she unlocks the window and throws it open. The woman carelessly slumps in, as if she doesn’t care which part of the ground her body hits. Luckily she crashes into Alya’s awaiting arms, who grunts as the deadweight constricts her breathing. “Ladybug, what happened?!”

Alya’s inquiry gets no audible response. Ladybug shakes her head wordlessly. She uses Alya’s body as leverage to push herself up into an upright position. She glances back at the window, still wide open and spitting in rainwater, and sneers. Ladybug slams it shut and pulls the curtains together tightly, creating a cotton wall that shields the outside world from view. Or, Alya ponders, is it shielding them from the outside world? 

The heroine stumbles to Alya’s bed in a zigzagging line. She looks drunk, tripping over her own toes and feeling the bed blindly with her hands before collapsing into its soft embrace. “Water,” is all Ladybug manages to utter.

Alya’s gaze follows hers until it lands on the lukewarm water bottle perched on the right corner of her nightstand. “Oh! Right, right. Of course!” She hurriedly hands it to Ladybug, who props herself up on a singular elbow, tilts back her head, and downs the entirety of the bottle in half a second. She tosses its plastic carcass onto the floor without a second thought. 

Alya takes the following moment of stillness as an opportunity to analyze Ladybug’s wounds. There’s a gash in the space between her brows; its edges are crusted with brown blood, which dries and flakes onto her nose and eyelids. The skin surrounding it is bruising. It appears that she’s been hit with some sort of blunt object; Alya finds herself looking away from Ladybug’s mangled frame just for a moment to eye the window curiously. Perhaps an impossibly strong akuma awaits outside? Maybe Rena Rouge’s assistance is required?

A few other bruises align on Ladybug’s cheeks like jagged constellations. Some scratches line her collarbones, and her breathing is slow and shallow, as if the rise and fall of her chest causes her a great deal of pain. Alya places a hand on Ladybug’s forehead; it’s molten hot to the touch, feverish. Infection must already be setting in.

“Is there an akuma you need me to help you with?” Alya asks, gnawing on her lower lip. Her stomach flips inside out as the severity of the situation slaps her in the face like a sack full of bricks: Ladybug isn’t faring well, and if Ladybug’s been defeated, what can Rena Rouge do? 

“No,” Ladybug says, “no akuma.” 

Alya freezes. If an akuma isn’t responsible, that meant there was something else out there. Something that was just as, if not more powerful, than Ladybug. Stronger than the city’s guardian. “Then what…?”

“I need your help dressing these wounds. Please.” 

“Can’t you use your lucky charm? Why do you need my help?”

Ladybug shakes her head. She raises her empty palms into the air. “No yo-yo.Taken,” the red-and-black clad woman explains in a raspy voice. She manages to laugh, though it sounds more akin to a choked cough. “Which means no healing. No resets. Nothing. I only have this suit to absorb about half the impact, to buffer the pain. That’s why I need your help.”

“I don’t think the first aid kit my family has is going to be enough for this, girl. You need stitches  _ at least,  _ and that’s assuming nothing’s broken.” The nervous bubbling of stomach acid builds inside Alya. The gurgling is audible now. It fills the empty lulls between claps of thunder.

“Don’t worry. I have a plan. But before anything else, I need you to help me with this.  _ Please,”  _ Ladybug breaks only to cough. “Then I’ll explain everything. What happened, how I’m going to fix it. Just — please, Alya. Please.”

Alya swears underneath her breath. Seeing Ladybug struggling to do something as mundane as speak is like waking up to eternal darkness. Injury and blood has never bothered her before. But when it’s  _ her, _ it feels as though all the blood in Alya’s body is rising to her head and making her top-heavy. If she wasn’t holding onto her bed frame, she fears she would have folded in half already. 

“Fine,” Alya caves. Ladybug smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “But after this, I’m finding a way to haul your ass to the emergency room.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”

Ladybug curls her aching frame into a crescent. She lets her eyelids fall shut, though Alya can see her eyes dancing behind them. Briefly, the redhead wonders what Ladybug is thinking about: is her mind plagued by images of her attacker? Is she reliving the fight over and over again in her mind, fearing that for the first time ever, she might be facing an opponent stronger than she?

Alya pinches the skin on her wrist to draw herself back into the present. “I’ll be right back.” She says, disappearing into the hallway. Ladybug hums in acknowledgement, though her thoughts take her back to twenty minutes before, to the sharp pin pricks of heavy rainfall battering her body and the smugness of a smile.

︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶﹀

The air beside her becomes unsettled as the steel object slams into the spot Ladybug occupied only moments before. The resistance her body provides out of soreness and stiffness makes her feel like she’s battling a shark underwater. Her movements are slow and barely enough to keep herself alive. Her pursuer, however, seems to be in his element. 

He strikes again. This time, Ladybug is a few seconds too slow. Just as she begins scrambling to her feet, she feels his staff slam into the back of her knees. She falls again, begins to slip back over the roof’s edge. But a pair of gloved hands grab at her wrists and hoists her back up. They pull her into the man’s body; one arm slithers around her waist, the other snakes up to her ears, hoping to snag a prize. Her arms are restrained, kept snugly at her sides. She wriggles about and strains her neck, hoping to stay out of his reach. But he takes one of her earrings between his fingers and begins trying to ease it out with a singular hand. 

“No!” Ladybug screeches. Out of desperation, she slams her knee into his crotch. He releases her and stumbles back, mouth agape in shock. In his eyes sparks a rage greater than any she’s ever seen before — she feels the heat of it lick her skin, practically burning her alive. 

Ladybug flees to the other side of the roof. She feels too meek to jump again, so she takes to the city streets. She eases herself down, listening to the frantic thudding of her attacker’s footsteps behind her. She feels his fingers grab at her, but she drops and he loses his grip. She manages to limp into the congested city streets and loses herself in the small clusters of people.

Now Ladybug finds herself keeping to the shadows of the roadways and alleyways. She keeps one hand on the walls and facades of buildings. Her body is lopsided, her brain malfunctioning. The only coherent thought she has becomes a mantra she plays on repeat to keep hold of it: get to Alya’s. Get to Alya’s. Get to Alya’s. She does this upon pure instinct. Her primal flight-or-fight response has been flipped on and the panel has been smashed to bits. Strategic planning or forethought is no longer a viable option.

When she hears him drawing near, she dives into a dumpster. She can hear him call out to her a few times, his tone low but mocking. “Come out, come out whenever you,  _ m’lady _ .” 

Chat Noir scans the alley for her one last time. Ladybug can feel the malice radiating off of his skin, even from her hiding place. For a moment or two she fears that he can see her despite the closed lid, or smell her blood through the offensive stench of rotten fruit, moldy bread and expired candy wrappers, among other things. Yet, through the crack in the lid, she watches as he turns his back to her. He hits the nearby building with the butt of his staff and hisses. “Dammit, Ladybug! I will find you!” 

When he disappears, she waits a few minutes. Then she crawls out of the dumpster and finishes the journey to Alya’s place.

  
︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶﹀

Alya tiptoes into the hallway. There’s a snowstorm swirling inside of her head, flurries of thoughts bringing a crisp chill to her bones. She wonders what Ladybug is keeping from her. She wonders  _ why _ Ladybug is keeping it from her at all. It seems that no matter how many steps forward in their relationship Alya takes, Ladybug has yet another wall through which she has yet to break through. 

She falsely assumed that becoming the part-time heroine Rena Rouge would give her access to the intimate secrets Ladybug and Chat Noir hide. Instead, she’s been left with more questions than answers. 

The mysterious air that surrounds Ladybug is a fishhook, though. It snags the attention of any that draw near. It enraptures those that stray too close; they get a taste of her scent (a sprinkle of vanilla hidden beneath the intermingling aromas of cinnamon and pumpkin spice) and the soft, bellchime-esque inflection in her voice and way of speaking and suddenly their mind is wrapped around the creature that is Ladybug. She’s so easy to get lost in: an ever changing maze.

That’s why Alya’s heart grows so heavy that she fears the extra weight will make her sink straight through her flat and into the one below. The idea of Ladybug being beaten like a punching bag by something more powerful than an akuma… Her mind is too scrambled to know what to think. 

What use is Alya to Ladybug? Why would she even bother asking the redhead for help when surely anyone else must be more reliable than her? Compared to Chat Noir, Rena Rouge is but a grain of sand.

She shakes her head. There will be time to mull over everything later. First, the first aid kit. Alya makes it to the end of the hallway and opens up the linen closet. She finds it tucked beneath a pile of musty old blankets in an array of muted colors. As she pulls it out from underneath them, she hears a knock. Her head snaps up. Again?

This time she finds the sound is originating from the front door. More reasonable than her bedroom window, but still curious considering the hour of pre-dawn twilight it is. She creeps over and peeks through the peephole before she opens it: there, drenched to the bone and looking rather peeved, stands Chat Noir. 


End file.
